DESCRIPTION
This file's primary job is to define the systems that upsmon(8) will
monitor and to tell it how to shut down the system when necessary. It
will contain passwords, so keep it secure. Ideally,only the upsmon
process should be able to read it.
Additionally, other optional configuration values can be set in this
file.
CONFIGURATION DIRECTIVES
DEADTIME seconds
upsmon allows a UPS to go missing for this many seconds before
declaring it "dead". The default is 15 seconds.
upsmon requires a UPS to provide status information every few
seconds (see POLLFREQ and POLLFREQALERT) to keep things updated.
If the status fetch fails, the UPS is marked stale. If it stays
stale for more than DEADTIME seconds, the UPS is marked dead.
A dead UPS that was last known to be on battery is assumed to
have changed to a low battery condition. This may force a shut-
down if it is providing a critical amount of power to your sys-
tem. This seems disruptive, but the alternative is barreling
ahead into oblivion and crashing when you run out of power.
Note: DEADTIME should be a multiple of POLLFREQ and POLLFRE-
QALERT. Otherwise, you'll have "dead" UPSes simply because
upsmon isn't polling them quickly enough. Rule of thumb: take
the larger of the two POLLFREQ values, and multiply by 3.
FINALDELAY seconds
When running in master mode, upsmon waits this long after send-
ing the NOTIFY_SHUTDOWN to warn the users. After the timer
elapses, it then runs your SHUTDOWNCMD. By default this is set
to 5 seconds.
If you need to let your users do something in between those
events, increase this number. Remember, at this point your UPS
battery is almost depleted, so don't make this too big.
Alternatively, you can set this very low so you don't wait
around when it's time to shut down. Some UPSes don't give much
warning for low battery and will require a value of 0 here for a
safe shutdown.
Note: If FINALDELAY on the slave is greater than HOSTSYNC on the
master, the master will give up waiting for the slave to discon-
This value is also used to keep slave systems from getting stuck
if the master fails to respond in time. After a UPS becomes
critical, the slave will wait up to HOSTSYNC seconds for the
master to set the FSD flag. If that timer expires, the slave
will assume that the master is broken and will shut down anyway.
This keeps the slaves from shutting down during a short-lived
status change to "OB LB" that the slaves see but the master
misses.
MINSUPPLIES num
Set the number of power supplies that must be receiving power to
keep this system running. Normal computers have just one power
supply, so the default value of 1 is acceptable.
Large/expensive server type systems usually have more, and can
run with a few missing. The HP NetServer LH4 can run with 2 out
of 4, for example, so you'd set it to 2. The idea is to keep
the box running as long as possible, right?
Obviously you have to put the redundant supplies on different
UPS circuits for this to make sense! See big-servers.txt in the
docs subdirectory for more information and ideas on how to use
this feature.
Also see the section on "power values" in upsmon(8).
MONITOR system powervalue username password type
Each UPS that you need to be monitor should have a MONITOR line.
Not all of these need supply power to the system that is running
upsmon. You may monitor other systems if you want to be able to
send notifications about status changes on them.
You must have at least one MONITOR directive in this file.
system is a UPS identifier. It is in this form:
<upsname>[@<hostname>[:<port>]]
The default hostname is "localhost". Some examples:
- "su700@mybox" means a UPS called "su700" on a system called
"mybox". This is the normal form.
- "fenton@bigbox:5678" is a UPS called "fenton" on a system
called "bigbox" which runs upsd(8) on port "5678".
powervalue is an integer representing the number of power sup-
MONITOR myups@bigserver 1 monmaster blah master
Meanwhile, the upsd.users on 'bigserver' would look like this:
[monmaster]
password = blah
allowfrom = (ACLs from upsd.conf(5))
upsmon master (or slave)
The type refers to the relationship with upsd(8). It can be
either "master" or "slave". See upsmon(8) for more information
on the meaning of these modes. The mode you pick here also goes
in the upsd.users file, as seen in the example above.
NOCOMMWARNTIME seconds
upsmon will trigger a NOTIFY_NOCOMM after this many seconds if
it can't reach any of the UPS entries in this configuration
file. It keeps warning you until the situation is fixed. By
default this is 300 seconds.
NOTIFYCMD command
upsmon calls this to send messages when things happen.
This command is called with the full text of the message as one
argument. The environment string NOTIFYTYPE will contain the
type string of whatever caused this event to happen.
If you need to use upssched(8), then you must make it your NOTI-
FYCMD by listing it here.
Note that this is only called for NOTIFY events that have EXEC
set with NOTIFYFLAG. See NOTIFYFLAG below for more details.
Making this some sort of shell script might not be a bad idea.
For more information and ideas, see pager.txt in the docs direc-
tory.
Remember, this also needs to be one element in the configuration
file, so if your command has spaces, then wrap it in quotes.
NOTIFYCMD "/path/to/script --foo --bar"
This script is run in the background - that is, upsmon forks
before it calls out to start it. This means that your NOTIFYCMD
Note that %s is replaced with the identifier of the UPS in ques-
tion.
Possible values for type:
ONLINE - UPS is back online
ONBATT - UPS is on battery
LOWBATT - UPS is on battery and has a low battery (is crit-
ical)
FSD - UPS is being shutdown by the master (FSD = "Forced
Shutdown")
COMMOK - Communications established with the UPS
COMMBAD - Communications lost to the UPS
SHUTDOWN - The system is being shutdown
REPLBATT - The UPS battery is bad and needs to be replaced
NOCOMM - A UPS is unavailable (can't be contacted for moni-
toring)
The message must be one element in the configuration file, so if
it contains spaces, you must wrap it in quotes.
NOTIFYMSG NOCOMM "Someone stole UPS %s"
NOTIFYFLAG type flag[+flag][+flag]...
By default, upsmon sends walls global messages to all logged in
users) via /bin/wall and writes to the syslog when things hap-
pen. You can change this.
Examples:
NOTIFYFLAG ONLINE SYSLOG
NOTIFYFLAG ONBATT SYSLOG+WALL+EXEC
Possible values for the flags:
SYSLOG - Write the message to the syslog
WALL - Write the message to all users with /bin/wall
EXEC - Execute NOTIFYCMD (see above) with the message
risk triggering the DEADTIME (see above) if you use a very large
number.
Second, there is a point of diminishing returns if you set it
too low. While upsd normally has all of the data available to
it instantly, most drivers only refresh the UPS status once
every 2 seconds. Polling any more than that usually doesn't get
you the information any faster.
POLLFREQALERT seconds
This is the interval that upsmon waits between polls if any of
its UPSes are on battery. You can use this along with POLLFREQ
above to slow down polls during normal behavior, but get quicker
updates when something bad happens.
This should always be equal to or lower than the POLLFREQ value.
By default it is also set 5 seconds.
The warnings from the POLLFREQ entry about too-high and too-low
values also apply here.
POWERDOWNFLAG filename
upsmon creates this file when running in master mode when the
UPS needs to be powered off. You should check for this file in
your shutdown scripts and call upsdrvctl shutdown if it exists.
This is done to forcibly reset the slaves, so they don't get
stuck at the "halted" stage even if the power returns during the
shutdown process. This usually does not work well on con-
tact-closure UPSes that use the genericups driver.
See the shutdown.txt file in the docs subdirectory for more
information.
RBWARNTIME seconds
When a UPS says that it needs to have its battery replaced,
upsmon will generate a NOTIFY_REPLBATT event. By default this
happens every 43200 seconds - 12 hours.
If you need another value, set it here.
RUN_AS_USER username
upsmon normally runs the bulk of the monitoring duties under
another user ID after dropping root privileges. On most systems
Then, tell upsmon to run as that user, and make upsmon.conf
readable by it. Your reloads will work, and your config file
will stay secure.
This file should not be writable by the upsmon user, as it would
be possible to exploit a hole, change the SHUTDOWNCMD to some-
thing malicious, then wait for upsmon to be restarted.
SHUTDOWNCMD command
upsmon runs this command when the system needs to be brought
down. If it is a slave, it will do that immediately whenever
the current overall power value drops below the MINSUPPLIES
value above.
When upsmon is a master, it will allow any slaves to log out
before starting the local shutdown procedure.
Note that the command needs to be one element in the config
file. If your shutdown command includes spaces, then put it in
quotes to keep it together, i.e.:
SHUTDOWNCMD "/sbin/shutdown -h +0"
SEE ALSO
upsmon(8), upsd(8), nutupsdrv(8).
Internet resources:
The NUT (Network UPS Tools) home page: http://www.networkupstools.org/
Mon Jan 22 2007 UPSMON.CONF(5)
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